So, after putting it down for many years, I'm back to trying to read HG Wells' corpus. Interesting thing: all of his famous, lasting, books were published between 1895-1899, when he was aged 29 to 33. There are other novels, lots of philosophical and political thought, but so far I would say none of it comes close to that first few years.
Having read lots of it my feeling is that he was very smart but used up his original ideas quickly and his political thought verged on silly.
As an example, at one point he proposes a Samurai class of government, which he understands to be a group of people who would forego privileges in exchange for power. He also has "philosophical" books which invariably feel like a sophomore college student paid by the word.
@ZachWeinersmith I find Wells to be hard to read, even his best stuff (according to others). I can read his contemporaries (e. g. Twain) with no problems, it must be some stylistic thing that bugs me, but I can't tell what.
@ZachWeinersmith Part of the zeitgeist at the time; at least he was imposing restrictions on his technocratic leader class.
On a related topic, the 1936 film adaptation of The Shape of Things to Come... stylish AF but politically <ouch/>
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